Best of
Gender

1999

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation


Eli Clare - 1999
    . . . Using the language of the elemental world, he delineates a complex human intersection and transmutes cruelty into its opposite—a potent, lifegiving remedy.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun HomeFirst published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.An award-winning poet and essayist, Eli Clare is also the author of The Marrow’s Telling.

Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics


José Esteban Muñoz - 1999
    José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.Disidentifications is also something of a performance in its own right, an attempt to fashion a queer world by working on, with, and against dominant ideology. By examining the process of identification in the work of filmmakers, performance artists, ethnographers, Cuban choteo, forms of gay male mass culture (such as pornography), museums, art photography, camp and drag, and television, Muñoz persistently points to the intersecting and short-circuiting of identities and desires that result from misalignments with the cultural and ideological mainstream in contemporary urban America.Muñoz calls attention to the world-making properties found in performances by queers of color—in Carmelita Tropicana’s “Camp/Choteo” style politics, Marga Gomez’s performances of queer childhood, Vaginal Creme Davis’s “Terrorist Drag,” Isaac Julien’s critical melancholia, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s disidentification with Andy Warhol and pop art, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s performances of “disidentity,” and the political performance of Pedro Zamora, a person with AIDS, within the otherwise artificial environment of the MTV serial The Real World.

Woman: An Intimate Geography


Natalie Angier - 1999
    Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk.A self-proclaimed "scientific fantasia of womanhood." Woman ultimately challenges widely accepted Darwinian-based gender stereotypes. Angier shows how cultural biases have influenced research in evolutionary psychology (the study of the biological bases of behavior) and consequently led to dubious conclusions about "female nature." such as the idea that women are innately monogamous while men are natural philanderers.But Angier doesn't just point fingers; she offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood. Woman is a seminal work that will endure as an essential read for anyone intersted in how biology affects who we are as women, as men, and as human beings.

The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist


Diane DiMassa - 1999
    Hothead Paisan, the over-caffeinated, media-crazed psychotic lesbian "with scary hair and a fetish for guns, grenades, mallets, and sharp objects, " returns for more search-and-destroy missions and preventative homicides A cult favorite, The Complete Collection combines Hothead Paisan and Revenge of Hothead Paisan with new strips in a single volume for the first time.

Documents on the Rape of Nanking


Timothy Brook - 1999
    What ended in one atrocity began with another: the savage military takeover of China's capital city, which quickly became known as the Rape of Nanking. The Japanese Army's conduct from December 1937 to February 1938 constitutes one of the most barbarous events not just of the war but of the century. The violence was documented at the time and then redocumented during the war crimes trial in Tokyo after the war. This book brings together materials from both moments to provide the first comprehensive dossier of primary sources on the Rape.Part 1, "The Records," includes two sources written as the Rape was underway. The first is a long set of documents produced by the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, a group of foreigners who strove to protect the Chinese residents. The second is a series of letters that American surgeon Dr. Robert Wilson wrote for his family during the same period. These letters are published here for the first time.The evidence compiled by the International Committee and its members would be decisive for the indictments against Japanese leaders at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. Part 2, "The Judgments," reprints portions of the tribunal's 1948 judgment dealing with the Rape of Nanking, its judicial consequences, and sections of the dissenting judgment of Justice Radhabinod Pal.These contemporary records and judgments create an intimate firsthand account of the Rape of Nanking. Together they are intended to stimulate deeper reflection than previously possible on how and why we assess and assign the burden of war guilt.Timothy Brook is Professor of Chinese History and Associate Director of the Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, University of Toronto, and is coeditor of Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities and Cultureand Economy: The Shaping of Capitalism in Eastern Asia, both published by the University of Michigan Press.

Deal with It!: A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a Gurl


Esther Drill - 1999
    It's a resource to help you learn about, laugh about, and figure out the stuff you go through on your way through life. It won't tell you what to do, because you'll need to decide that for yourself. But whether you're wondering about your body, your feelings or your changing relationships with the people around you, this book provides accurate information and outlines your options. Hilarious illustrations point out the humor in even the sorriest situations. And with hundreds of excerpts from real-girl conversations on the gURL.com website, you can see for real that whatever you're going through, you're not alone. This book is for anyone who needs to know what it means to be a girl -- from those on the edge of their teens to those who are way past them but still reeling from the trauma.

Sex and Social Justice


Martha C. Nussbaum - 1999
    Offering an internationalism informed by development economics and empirical detail, many essays take their start from the experiences of women in developing countries. Nussbaum argues for a universal account of human capacity and need, while emphasizing the essential role of knowledge of local circumstance. Further chapters take on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, exploring the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Nussbaum's arguments are shaped by her work on Aristotle and the Stoics and by the modern liberal thinkers Kant and Mill. She contends that the liberal tradition of political thought holds rich resources for addressing violations of human dignity on the grounds of sex or sexuality, provided the tradition transforms itself by responsiveness to arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and desires. She challenges liberalism to extend its tradition of equal concern to women, always keeping both agency and choice as goals. With great perception, she combines her radical feminist critique of sex relations with an interest in the possibilities of trust, sympathy, and understanding.Sex and Social Justice will interest a wide readership because of the public importance of the topics Nussbaum addresses and the generous insight she shows in dealing with these issues. Brought together for this timely collection, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, offer incisive political reflections by one of our most important living philosophers.

The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics


Cathy J. Cohen - 1999
    And while African Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than 55 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV infections. These alarming developments have caused reactions ranging from profound grief to extreme anger in African-American communities, yet the organized political reaction has remained remarkably restrained. The Boundaries of Blackness is the first full-scale exploration of the social, political, and cultural impact of AIDS on the African-American community. Informed by interviews with activists, ministers, public officials, and people with AIDS, Cathy Cohen unflinchingly brings to light how the epidemic fractured, rather than united, the black community. She traces how the disease separated blacks along different fault lines and analyzes the ensuing struggles and debates. More broadly, Cohen analyzes how other cross-cutting issues—of class, gender, and sexuality—challenge accepted ideas of who belongs in the community. Such issues, she predicts, will increasingly occupy the political agendas of black organizations and institutions and can lead to either greater inclusiveness or further divisiveness.The Boundaries of Blackness, by examining the response of a changing community to an issue laced with stigma, has much to teach us about oppression, resistance, and marginalization. It also offers valuable insight into how the politics of the African-American community—and other marginal groups—will evolve in the twenty-first century.

The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas Into History


Emma Pérez - 1999
    it will certainly be read seriously in Chicano/a studies." --Women's Review of BooksEmma Perez discusses the historical methodology which has created Chicano history and argues that the historical narrative has often omitted gender. She poses a theory which rejects the colonizer's methodological assumptions and examines new tools for uncovering the hidden voices of Chicanas who have been relegated to silence.

Sor Juana's Second Dream


Alicia Gaspar De Alba - 1999
    Wanting only to study, confused by her love for la Marquesa, and loathe to marry, in five years Juana becomes Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jerónimo. There, her quill becomes her salvation and damnation as her notoriety mounts with each new artistic commission. Popular with court and clergy, she receives a stream of guests at the convent, among them la Condesa de Paredes, who becomes Sor Juana's intimate friend. More than two decades later, after brilliantly defending her right to think, teach, and write, Sor Juana appears before the Inquisition and abruptly withdraws from the spotlight.Mixing fiction with Sor Juana's own words, and drawing on the most recent Sor Juana scholarship, Alicia Gaspar de Alba creates the most full-bodied portrait of Mexico's Tenth Muse to date. This remarkable novel about a remarkable woman will enlighten a new generation of readers, and stoke the interest of devotees who already are captivated by the inspiring Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz."An adventuresome exploration into the lyrical and historical vision of an extraordinary woman, written by an extraordinary novelist who has given us a new possibility to dream and invent Sor Juana Inés all over again."--Marjorie Agosín, Wellesley College"Beautifully written, without doubt the best book I have read this year. A masterpiece."--Greg Sarris, author of "Watermelon Nights"

Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman


Shelley Rice - 1999
    Yet they share a deeply theatrical obsession that shatters any notion of a unified self. All three try out identities from different social classes and geographic environments, extend their temporal range into the past and future, and transform themselves into heroes and villains, mythological creatures, and sex goddesses. The premise of Inverted Odysseys is that this expanded concept of the self; this playful urge to try on other roles-is more than a feminist or psychological issue. It is central to our global culture, to our definition of human identity in a world where the individual exists in a multicultural and multitemporal environment. This book is an odyssey through historical, theoretical, critical, and literary perspectives on the three artists viewed in the context of these issues.ContributorsLynn Gumpert, Lucy Lippard, Jonas Mekas, Ted Mooney, Shelley Rice, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau.Central to the book is Claude Cahun's Heroines manuscript, a series of fifteen stream-of-consciousness monologues written in the voices of major women of literature and history, such as the Virgin Mary, Sappho, Cinderella, Penelope, Delilah, and Helen of Troy. Translated by Norman MacAfee, these perverse and hilarious vignettes make their English-language debut here. This is also the first time that Cahun's text has appeared in its entirety. The book accompanies an exhibit cocurated by Lynn Gumpert and Shelley Rice at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.Published in cooperation with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: Grey Art Gallery, New York, New York: November 16, 1999 - January 29, 2000 Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida: March - May 2000

Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression


James Sidanius - 1999
    Using social dominance theory, it is presumed that it is also a basic grammar of social power shared by all societies in common. We use social dominance theory in an attempt to identify the elements of this grammar and to understand how these elements interact and reinforce each other to produce and maintain group-based social hierarchy.

Unbending Gender


Joan C. Williams - 1999
    Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down


Joan Morgan - 1999
    When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost is a decidedly intimate look into the life of the modern black woman: a complex world where feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab; where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds black women, who long for marriage, that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the African-American population; and where black women are forced to make sense of a world where "truth is no longer black and white but subtle, intriguing shades of gray." Morgan ushers in a voice that, like hiphop - the cultural movement that defines her generation - samples and layers many voices, and injects its sensibilities into the old and flips it into something new, provocative, and powerful.

Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction


Jane Rendell - 1999
    Carefully structured and with numerous introductory essays, it guides the reader through theoretical and multi-disciplinary texts to direct considerations of gender in relation to particular architectural sites, projects and ideas. This collection marks a seminal point in gender and architecture, both summarizing core debates and pointing toward new directions and discussions for the future.

Angry Young Men: How Parents, Teachers, and Counselors Can Help Bad Boys Become Good Men


Aaron R. Kipnis - 1999
    Angry Young Men offers specific, practical advice for parents, teachers, counselors, communityleaders, and justice professionals-- everyone who wants to helpat-risk boys become strong, productive, caring, and compassionatemen.Angry Young Men is an extremely important book that is especiallytimely now during our current epidemic of violence by and againstboys and young men . . . Aaron Kipnis has seen deeply, not onlyinto the souls of troubled boys and adolescents, but also intothose aspects of the spirit of our culture and our epoch that haveturned an unprecedentedly large portion of our boys and young meninto the perpetrators and victims of violence.--From the Forewordby James Gilligan, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, Harvard MedicalSchool

Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way Into the Triune God


Eugene F. Rogers Jr. - 1999
    This controversial book will be welcomed for the radical new insights it provides into Christian arguments about the body.

Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity


Naomi Sawelson-Gorse - 1999
    Indeed, the word Dada evokes the idea of the male--both as father and as domineering authority. Thus female colleagues were to be seen not heard, nurturers not usurpers, pleasant not disruptive.This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role in European and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birth control and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding female workforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were among the forces that contributed to the Dadaist enterprise.Among the female dadaists discussed are the German �migr� Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah H�ch; French dadaists Juliette Roche and Suzanne Duchamp; Zurich dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings; expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the Queen of Greenwich Village, Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ran The Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism, cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. The bibliography was compiled by the International Dada Archive (Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli).ContributorsEleanor S. Apter, Barbara J. Bloemink, Willard Bohn, Carolyn Burke, William A. Camfield, Whitney Chadwick, Dorothea Dietrich, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Paul B. Franklin, Ren�e Riese Hubert, Marisa Januzzi, Amelia Jones, Marie T. Keller, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Maud Lavin, Margaret A. Morgan, Dickran Tashjian, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Barbara Zabel

How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna Haraway


Donna J. Haraway - 1999
    How Like a Leaf will be a welcome inside view of the author's thought.

Intersex in the Age of Ethics


Alice Domurat Dreger - 1999
    It could not be more timely, as professional conferences, gender clinics, and the popular media now consider how medicine and society should handle intersex and intersexuals. This volume provides a much-needed perspective.

Masculinities


Raewyn W. Connell - 1999
    Exploring themes such as global gender relations and the practical uses of masculinity research, this text looks at the implications for the field, particularly with regard to understanding current world issues.

Health Care Without Shame: A Handbook for the Sexually Diverse and Their Caregivers


Charles Moser - 1999
    Now, Dr. Charles Moser, one of the nation's leading authorities on sexuality-related medicine, has created a comprehensive guidebook for anyone who's ever struggled with the sentence, "Doctor, there's something I have to tell you..."Dr. Moser explains how and when to come out to your health care provider, how to protect your confidentially, how to handle a health care provider who isn't understanding about your alternative sexuality, how to deal with sex-related emergencies, and more. He also includes detailed information on dealing with other professionals such as therapists, attorneys, and accountants.Vital information for anyone whose sexuality is non-traditional, and for any health care provider who wants to provide the best possible care for patients of all descriptions.

Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted


Polly Young-Eisendrath - 1999
    Instead of being able to know what they really want or who they really are, women have been conditioned to accept images -- the good daughter, the nice friend, the ideal boss, the perfect mother -- to define themselves through reflections from others. As a result, self-direction, self-determination, and self-confidence are undermined from adolescence through old age. A double bind comes to surround female desire: a woman is damned as "the bitch" if she is direct and self-determining; but she is confused and indirect if she plays the Object of Desire.Dr. Young-Eisendrath shows us how to break out of this double bind so that we can encounter the challenges of choice and responsibility for our own desires. She wisely uses mythological and personal stories to help us take control of our sexual, relational, material, and spiritual lives. If you feel confused, resentful, or trapped in a life that does not seem to be fully yours, then you can find a clear path to your true self, once and for all, with the help of Women and Desire.

Don't Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial


Ellen Willis - 1999
    In keeping with the mass media's glib assumption that a phenomenal increase in wealth for a minority meant genuine national prosperity, the 1990s saw an astounding refusal, on both the left and right, to question received wisdom or engage in substantive deliberation. Turning her acute eye to the decade's defining moments-imbroglios like those surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial, The Bell Curve, Monica-gate, and the Million Man March-Ellen Willis reveals the mindlessness behind the noise. Arguing that we suffer from a lack of true freedom, she demands that we radically rethink our country and ourselves to create a society in which we can fully enjoy life.

Sex And The Floating World: Erotic Images In Japan, 1700 1820


Timon Screech - 1999
    The text situates these erotic images within the contexts of sexuality, gender and power and re-establishes shunga in Japanese culture and creativity, covering questions of aesthetics and shunga in official art history.

Sexual Generations: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gender


Robin Roberts - 1999
    By having aliens or sexually neutral beings enact female dominance or passivity, experience pregnancy or maternity, or suffer rape or abortion, Star Trek provides viewers with a new perspective on these experiences and an antidote to explicit and implicit cultural biases.   Roberts maintains that the relevance of Star Trek: The Next Generation to feminist issues accounts as no other factor can for the program's huge following of female fans. The incisive and innovative readings in Sexual Generations provide food for thought about how the final frontier can clarify pressing questions of our own space and time.

For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh


Frances A. Underhill - 1999
    Elizabeth de Burgh, nee Elizabeth de Clare, (1295-1360) led a tumultuous early life: an arranged marriage, an abduction leading to a clandestine second marriage, a forced third marriage to a man who died a traitor. Afterwards, empowered by a vow of chastity to insure her independence, Elizabeth emerged as a capable administrator of her vast estates, a concerned mother and grandmother, a shrewd builder of social and political networks, and a good friend. She expressed her piety by many charitable initiatives, culminating in the foundation of Clare College, Cambridge University, a demonstration of her devotion to God and to learning. This book is the first biography of this remarkable woman. Frances Underhill shows how deeply gender issues influenced her life and how admirably Elizabeth rose above them to impact the lives of others. Hedged in by gender barriers, Underhill reveals, Elizabeth achieved prestige among her contemporaries and left a lasting legacy after her death.

The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany


Ulinka Rublack - 1999
    Ulinka Rublack draws on court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarreling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines, and explores women's experiences of communities and courtship, marriage, the family, and the law.

Sex and Friendship in Baboons


Barbara B. Smuts - 1999
    Barbara Smuts used long-term friendships between males and females, documented over a two-year period, to show how social interactions between members of friendly pairs differed from those of other troop mates, Her findings, now enhanced by 15 years of field studies, suggest that the evolution of male reproductive strategies in baboons can only be understood by considering the relationship between sex and friendship: female baboons prefer to mate with males who have previously engaged in friendly interaction with them and their offspring. Smuts suggests that female choice may promote male investment in other species, and she explores the relevance of her findings for the evolution of male-female relationships in humans.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising


Jean Kilbourne - 1999
    Discusses the advertising establishment, revealing what advertisers know about human nature and how they exploit it to make a profit.

Women in Horror Films, 1940s


Gregory William Mank - 1999
    Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, King Kong, the Wolf Man, or any of the other legendary Hollywood monsters. Some were even monsters themselves, such as Elsa Lanchester as the Bride, and Gloria Holden as Dracula's Daughter. And while evading the Strangler of the Swamp, former Miss America Rosemary La Planche is allowed to rescue her leading man. This book provides details about the lives and careers of 21 of these cinematic leading ladies, femmes fatales, monsters, and misfits, putting into perspective their contributions to the films and folklore of Hollywood terror--and also the sexual harassment, exploitation, and genuine danger they faced on the job. Veteran actress Virginia Christine recalls Universal burying her alive in a backlot swamp in full mummy makeup for the resurrection scene in The Mummy's Curse--and how the studio saved that scene for the last day in case she suffocated. Filled with anecdotes and recollections, many of the entries are based on original interviews, and there are numerous old photographs and movie stills.

Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War 1


Margaret R. Higonnet - 1999
    Lines of Fire challenges the restrictions of official history and traditional ideas of "war literature, " bringing together a rich and astonishing array of women's journalism, political treatises, diaries, and eyewitness accounts, as well as illustrations, fiction, and poetry written in response to WWI. Lines of Fire is also truly ground breaking in that it is an international anthology, including contributions not only from Great Britain and the United States, but also from France, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Belgium, India, Italy, Turkey, Africa, and the Middle East.

Images of Rape: The 'Heroic' Tradition and Its Alternatives


Diane Wolfthal - 1999
    Examining the full range of representations, from those that glorify rape to those that condemn it, Diane Wolfthal illuminates the complex web of attitudes toward sexual violence that existed in the medieval and early modern society. She makes her case using a range of visual documentation, including picture Bibles, law treatises, justice paintings, war prints, and the manuscripts of Christine de Pizan.

The Armored Rose


Tody Beck - 1999
    The book focuses on the physical differences between tendons, hands, body ratio as well as the chemical differences in the endocrine system and how it effects the reactions both he and she have on the fighting field. The book also dives in depth to examine what is going on between the ears of the female fighter. Throughout the book there are specific tips for trainers on how to apply the information. The book makes specific references to fighting in the SCA but has been used in Law Enforcement and other Martial Arts when working with women, and male trainers. Any trainer will likely find information well worth the price.

Who Am I?: An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit


Yi-Fu Tuan - 1999
    This unusually introspective autobiography mixes Yi-Fu Tuan’s reflections on a life filled with recognition, accolades, and affection with what he deems moral failings, his lack of courage—including the courage to be open about his homosexuality.

Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality


Calvin Thomas - 1999
    Seeking to proliferate the findings and insights of queer theory, contributors explore the issue of whether and how queer theory can speak for and include the straight.   In some of the ways that men have learned from feminism to interrogate the construction of masculinity, straights are learning from queer theory to interrogate constructions of straightness, to question their place in those constructions, and to make critical interventions into the institutional reproduction of the heterosexual norm. Straight with a Twist responds to the formulations of some of the leading figures in queer theory, considers demonstrations of the queer in television programs ("Seinfeld," for example) and contemporary films, and explores to what extent and in what ways literary texts from Shakespeare to Dorothy Allison are open to queer interpretation.   Committed to antihomophobic cultural analysis, Straight with a Twist aims to extend the reach of queer theory and humanize the world by making it "queerer than ever."

Feminism and the Biological Body


Lynda Birke - 1999
    However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine.As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.

Paper Bridges: Selected Poems


Kadya Molodowsky - 1999
    This is a retrospective survey of her poetry and a book-length translation of her work into English. The introduction discusses her place in Yiddish poetry, with annotations on the poems, and a section of photographs.

Fighting to Become Americans: Assimilation and the Trouble Between Jewish Women and Jewish Men


Riv-Ellen Prell - 1999
    Her plated gold jewelry with paste stones reveals its cheapness by its very extravagance.This description of a ghetto girl was printed in the American Jewish News in 1918, but with slight variation it might easily be mistaken for a description of our current pernicious and pejorative stereotype of Jewish womanhood, the JAP. What are the origins of these stereotypes? And even more important, why would an American ethnic group use racist terms to describe itself? Riv-Ellen Prell asks these compelling questions as she observes how deeply anti-Semitic stereotypes infuse Jewish men's and women's views of one another in this history of Jewish acculturation in the twentieth century.

Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture


Frances E. Dolan - 1999
    Dolan offers a perceptive study of the central role that Catholics and Catholicism played in early modern English law, literature, and politics. She contends that despite sharing the same blood, origins, and history as their Protestant antagonists, Catholics provoked more prolific and intemperate visual and verbal representation, and more elaborate and sustained legal regulation, than any other marginal group in seventeenth-century England. This careful and thorough study examines legal and literary representations of the "Catholic menace" during three crises in Protestant/Catholic relations, from the Gunpowder Plot (1605) to the Popish Plot and Meal Tub Plot (1678-80). It also offers the first sustained analysis of the extent to which gender issues informed both Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in the early modern period. Available for the first time in paperback, this book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern England, Catholic history, and gender studies.

Social Authorship and the Advent of Print


Margaret J. M. Ezell - 1999
    She also explores the literary concepts that subsequently developed out of new commercial practices, such as the rise of the "classic" text and the marketing of uniform series editions.Ezell's interdisciplinary approach draws together the history of the book and cultural history. The result allows the reader a glimpse of literary life as practiced by "social" authors in the context of the development of commercial publishing and the formalization of copyright laws defining texts and authors. Ezell examines how early modern publishers went about choosing books to publish and why some groups of writers—"social" authors—were successful without relying on the growing publishing and bookselling industries. She concludes that, especially for writers living away from large cities, privately produced and circulated manuscripts remained the best means of transmitting literary or academic work and achieving recognition as an author. An underlying question, Ezell notes, is whether the Internet will inspire the reemergence of the "social" author, whose work can be circulated to readers without the assistance of a publishing firm.

We Weren't Modern Enough: Women Artists and the Limits of German Modernism


Marsha Meskimmon - 1999
    Reconsidering the traditional definitions of German modernism and its central issues of race politics, eugenics, and the city, Meskimmon explores the structures that marginalized the work of little known artists such as Lotte Laserstein, Jeanne Mammen, Gerta Overbeck and Grete Jurgens. She shows how these women's personal and professional experiences in the 1920s and 1930s relate to the visual imagery produced at that time. She also examines representations of different female roles—prostitute, mother, housewife, the "New Woman" and "garçonne"—that attracted the attention of these artists. Situating her exploration on a strong theoretical base, she ranges deftly over mass visual culture—from film to poster art and advertising—to create a vivid portrait of women living and creating in Weimar Germany.

Strategic Sex


D. Travers ScottLawrence Schimel - 1999
    This book examines why sex is brought into the spotlight, defying mainstream social codes of etiquette and obscenity. Readers will discover wide-ranging opinions and personal experiences from scholars, activists, artists, educators, sex workers, and pornographers who explore -- and sometimes demonstrate -- why they won't leave sex in the bedroom. Surprisingly moving, humorous, erotic, and intelligent, Strategic Sex shares episodes of powerfully affected lives, thoughts, and behaviors. Sex is revealed as more than merely a blind, animal instinct but a tool which can be harnessed to specific ends. The contributors -- heterosexual, homosexual, male, female, and gray areas in between -- relate and imagine ways of harnessing sexual energy. While some reveal goals as noble as rape prevention, improving women's health care, fighting racism, overcoming grief, and community building, others illustrate sex utilized for self-promotion or manipulation of groups and individuals. With a unique mix of fiction, analysis, performance texts and personal essays, Strategic Sex ultimately presents sex as a powerful influence on dominant power structures within cultures.

Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Equality and Activism


Jodi Gold - 1999
    Since the early 1980's, a student movement has emerged from the belief that sexual violence is neither inherent nor inevitable. Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Equality and Activism chronicles the move to end to all forms of sexual violence and to mold a new sexual paradigm where explicitly consensual sex and sexual autonomy are the norm. Based on ten years of collaborative research and national organizing, Gold and Villari have compiled the writings of leading student activists and young scholars wrestling with complex issues of power inequities, free speech, and societal constructions of gender and sexuality in accessible and mainstream dialogues. Authors also examine the generationally specific style of student activism which emphasizes peer education and institutional collaboration. Just Sex-the first ever gathering of primary documents including university policies, personal testimonies, position papers and scholarly essays-offers a glimpse of the "working papers" of a student movement which has altered the sexual landscape of our campuses and communities forever. This valuable volume will be of interest to student activists, administrators, and anyone interested in ending violence on and off of campus.

Engendering Psychology: Women and Gender Revisited


Florence L. Denmark - 1999
    The text combines a developmental and topical approach. Denmark, Rabinowitz, and Sechzer explore the concept of gender as a social construction across the lines of race, ethnicity, class, age, and sexual orientation, pulling from the exciting new scholarship that has emerged over the last few years. Thoughtful discussion questions emphasize critical thinking skills, as well as encourage students to open a dialogue with both their professors and their peers. This text will help readers understand the concept of gender as a social construct in contrast to the concept of sex, which denotes biological differences. Upon completing this text, readers will have a deeper understanding of women and the knowledge that "woman" is a diverse and multifaceted category.

The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking


Barbara Burman - 1999
    In an age of relative affluence and mass production, it is easy to forget that just over a generation ago, young girls from middle- and working-class backgrounds were routinely taught to sew as a practical necessity. However, not only have the skills involved in home dressmaking been overlooked and marginalized due to their association with women and the home, but the impact home dressmaking had on women's lives and broader socioeconomic structures also has been largely ignored.This book is the first serious account of the significance of home dressmaking as a form of European and American material culture. Exploring themes from the last two hundred years to the present, including gender, technology, consumption and visual representation, contributors show how home dressmakers negotiated and experienced developments to meet a wide variety of needs and aspirations. Not merely passive consumers, home dressmakers have been active producers within family economies. They have been individuals with complex agendas expressed through their roles as wives, mothers and workers in their own right and shaped by ideologies of femininity and class.This book represents a vital contribution to women's studies, the history of fashion and dress, design history, material culture, sociology and anthropology.

Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music


Mavis Bayton - 1999
    from the punk era until today. The author, an academic and musician, carried out over 100 interviews with women playing in British bands from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Although the book is primarily sociological, it is easily accessible to the general reader and rich with quotations. It explains the shortage of female instrumentalists and explores the routes and life experiences that have been taken by those exceptional women who do play in bands.

Women of Other Worlds: Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism


Helen Merrick - 1999
    

Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity


Sharon R. Mazzarella - 1999
    The intent of this book is to help us better understand the complex relationship between girls and their culture. Informed by a broad range of theoretical perspectives and employing a variety of methodologies, the essays in this collection address the ways that mainstream culture �instructs� girls on how to become a woman - the ways in which the culture approves of �growing up girls.� Specifically, these essays examine the messages mainstream culture gives girls about romance, sexuality, life experiences, body image, gender and culture identity, and the way girls themselves negotiate these messages.

Faking It: U.S. Hegemony in a “Post-Phallic” Era


Cynthia Weber - 1999
    

Women, Work and Islamism: Ideology & Resistance in Iran


Maryam Poya - 1999
    Drawing on original research into women's participation in the work force, the author shows how the Islamization of state and society which followed the 1979 revolution involved an attempt by the Islamic state to seclude women within the home. Its power to transform gender relations, however, was constrained by many factors--the Iran-Iraq war, economic restructuring, and women's varied responses to oppression. In 1999, women's participation in the labor force is greater than it was before the revolution, and gender consciousness is at a higher level than at the height of westernization in the 1960s and 70s.

Consent


Pamela Haag - 1999
    At once an investigation of social history, popular culture, legal doctrine, and political theory, her book shows how in contemporary America the history of sexual rights is inextricably intertwined with that of liberalism. Haag examines the nineteenth-century obsession with the perils of seduction and twentieth-century disputes over white slavery, arranged marriages, interracial relationships, and rape. The history of heterosexual modernity and identity must, she argues, be viewed as a crucial component of a much larger historical narrative--that of the ways in which individual freedom and citizenship have been continually redefined in American liberal culture. She illuminates the development of liberalism from its classic stage that ended after the post-Reconstruction era to a modern version that came to fruition with the judicial acceptance of the right to privacy. Finally, she shows how debates over the meaning of heterosexual consent and violence contributed to this transformation.

The Pig Farmer's Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present


Mary Frances Berry - 1999
    Provides a fascinating vision of justice and history." --The Washington Post Book WorldFrom the head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission comes a landmark study of the ways in which prejudice has shaped American justice from the Civil War era to the present. With an ear tuned to the social subtext of every judicial decision, Mary Frances Berry examines a century's worth of appellate cases,  ranging from a nineteenth-century Alabama case in which a white woman was denied her divorce petition because an affair between a white man (her husband) and a black woman (his lover) was "of no consequence," to such recent, high-profile cases as the William Kennedy Smith and O.J. Simpson trials. By turns shocking, moving, ironic, and tragic, each tale ends in the laying down of law. And because the law perpetuates myths of race, gender, and class, they are stories that affect the lives of us all.